According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health disparities are "preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations."

Out of the currently 1.8 million incarcerated Americans in the United States, nearly 57% of incarcerated men and 78% of incarcerated women live below the poverty line before their incarceration (Washington University in St. Louis). Considering that lower-class Americans have historically faced much higher rates of chronic health conditions ranging from mental health disorders to diabetes and obesity, the glaring inequities of this statistic prove that upon incarceration, individuals are already at a disadvantage for their future health outcomes.

Additionally, the lack of access to reliable and culturally competent healthcare services that Queer, BIPOC, and Female prisoners face contributes to the severity of pre-existing health needs.

Many of the current conversations surrounding health equity in prisons center around acute health concerns, prioritizing immediate solutions to the litany of conditions faced behind bars. Reentry is a liminal space, and often, individuals can slip between the cracks and cannot afford or fail to receive adequate health services.

Doctor Lisa Puglisi, an associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine, highlighted the need to improve the barriers to care faced in reentry in What Does Health Justice Look Like for People Returning from Incarceration? (AMA Journal of Ethics, 2017) providing an analysis of the information on assessing health equity in prisons through how we can better bring theory to practice in assessing methodologies for providing equitable access to health across many populations. Puglisi highlights that one of the most considerable barriers to healthcare faced by

the formerly incarcerated is the inability to access federal health insurance programs, with many losing Medicaid benefits upon reentry. This deficit, in turn, further aggravates health outcomes for individuals as patients with chronic conditions that may have gone overlooked during incarceration are unable to receive holistic care in their communities.

Beyond the bureaucratic barriers faced, Individuals leaving incarceration have higher rates of distrust of the healthcare system, primarily due to historical inequalities driven by the war on drugs, which has resulted in the arrest of BIPOC Americans for minor drug offenses at tremendously high rates. Despite this, healthcare practitioners often do not consider the historical factors that drive medical distrust and the divide between practitioner and patient.